Biography
Vernon W. Cisney was born and raised in Mattoon, Illinois, USA. He did his undergraduate work at Lake Land College and Eastern Illinois University, before completing a master's degree in philosophy at the University of Memphis in 2006. He then entered the doctoral program in philosophy at Purdue University, where he was awarded a Ross Fellowship in 2006-2007, a Summer Research Grant in 2011, and the philosophy department Teaching Award in 2012. In September 2011, he defended his dissertation, which was titled "Toward a Philosophy of Difference: From Derrida to Deleuze" and was unanimously nominated by the members of his committee for an Outstanding Dissertation Award. During the 2011-2012 academic year, he was an adjunct philosophy faculty member in the humanities department at Indiana University Kokomo. After completing his doctoral work in 2012, he accepted a position at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, USA, where he was awarded, in October 2017, the Ralph Cavaliere Endowed Teaching Award. He is now chair and associate professor of interdisciplinary studies, along with a member of Jewish studies, and a contributing faculty member in philosophy and cinema and media studies at Gettysburg College. He teaches at the intersections of philosophy, religion, literature, cinema, the sciences, and political philosophy, in addition to being one of the primary advisors for students creating individual, interdisciplinary majors. He was recently awarded the Berg-Myers Award for Teaching Excellence in Jewish Studies. In his spare time, he enjoys singing and playing guitar, working crossword puzzles, watching movies, and hanging out with his family; and he is also an avid tattoo enthusiast. He lives in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania with his daughter and his dog, Grover.
Research
Vern's research is primarily in the areas of contemporary continental philosophy (with a focus on Deleuze, Foucault, and Derrida), Philosophy of Film, and Philosophy of Literature (figures such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Franz Kafka, Virginia Woolf, David Foster Wallace, and Cormac McCarthy). Thematically, he is concerned with questions pertaining to the nature of and relations between difference and identity, the nature of selfhood and literature's power to transform the world, and the intersections of ontology, agency, aesthetics, and social and political practice.
Vernon recently finished his second monograph, titled Deleuze and Derrida: Difference and the Power of the Negative. This book was published in hardcover with Edinburgh University Press in 2018, and came out in paperback in August 2020. He also recently recorded for Learn25 an audio lecture series, titled The Devil: A Biography (listen to a sample here), as well as two seminars for One Day University, one on Franz Kafka, and the other on Quentin Tarantino. He has recently been working on a number of papers on Deleuze, Derrida, and Cormac McCarthy. Some of his other recent papers and book chapters include "Something to do with a Girl Named Marla: Eros and Gender in David Fincher's Fight Club," "The Poststructuralist Broom of Wallace's System: A Conversation Between Wittgenstein and Derrida," "Metaphor, Metamorphosis, and Meaning: 'All the Possibilities of Language' in Difference and Repetition," "In G.O.D. We Trust: The Desert of the Religious in The Broom of the System," "The Writer is a Sorcerer: Literature and the Becomings of A Thousand Plateaus," "How One Becomes What One Is: The Nietzschean Polytheology of Joker (2022)," and "Will God Forgive Us?: Interdependence and Self-Transcendence in Paul Schrader's First Reformed (2020)."
Vernon is also in the preparatory stages of several new projects. He has recently begun writing a reader's guide to the philosophy of Deleuze, titled Reading Deleuze. He is also working on one other manuscript, titled Deleuze and the Intensive Materiality of Literature. This book will develop Deleuze's philosophy of language as it evolves through the course of his career, and as it relates to his understanding of literature, and it attempts to formulate a Deleuzian, materialist theory of language by way of literary readings. Finally, Vernon is in the early stages of a new edited collection with Robert Luzecky, Deleuze, Guattari, and the Schizoanalysis of the Earth.
Vernon recently finished his second monograph, titled Deleuze and Derrida: Difference and the Power of the Negative. This book was published in hardcover with Edinburgh University Press in 2018, and came out in paperback in August 2020. He also recently recorded for Learn25 an audio lecture series, titled The Devil: A Biography (listen to a sample here), as well as two seminars for One Day University, one on Franz Kafka, and the other on Quentin Tarantino. He has recently been working on a number of papers on Deleuze, Derrida, and Cormac McCarthy. Some of his other recent papers and book chapters include "Something to do with a Girl Named Marla: Eros and Gender in David Fincher's Fight Club," "The Poststructuralist Broom of Wallace's System: A Conversation Between Wittgenstein and Derrida," "Metaphor, Metamorphosis, and Meaning: 'All the Possibilities of Language' in Difference and Repetition," "In G.O.D. We Trust: The Desert of the Religious in The Broom of the System," "The Writer is a Sorcerer: Literature and the Becomings of A Thousand Plateaus," "How One Becomes What One Is: The Nietzschean Polytheology of Joker (2022)," and "Will God Forgive Us?: Interdependence and Self-Transcendence in Paul Schrader's First Reformed (2020)."
Vernon is also in the preparatory stages of several new projects. He has recently begun writing a reader's guide to the philosophy of Deleuze, titled Reading Deleuze. He is also working on one other manuscript, titled Deleuze and the Intensive Materiality of Literature. This book will develop Deleuze's philosophy of language as it evolves through the course of his career, and as it relates to his understanding of literature, and it attempts to formulate a Deleuzian, materialist theory of language by way of literary readings. Finally, Vernon is in the early stages of a new edited collection with Robert Luzecky, Deleuze, Guattari, and the Schizoanalysis of the Earth.
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Contact
CAMPUS ADDRESS CAMPUS PHONE Prof. Vernon W. Cisney (717) 337-6296 Gettysburg College Interdisciplinary Studies EMAIL Campus Box 390 vcisney@gmail.com 300 N. Washington St. vcisney@gettysburg.edu Gettysburg, PA 17325 |
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